I am a postdoc at Boston University, hosted by Ran Canetti. I received my PhD from UC Berkeley, where I was advised by Alessandro Chiesa. My work focuses on post-quantum proof systems. My interests include interactive proof systems and zero knowledge in general, post-quantum cryptography, coding theory and computational complexity.

In summer 2018 I was an intern at IBM Research Zürich, working with Jan Camenisch.

I received my master's degree in theoretical computer science from ETH Zürich, Switzerland, in 2015.

I received my bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Cambridge in 2013. My bachelor's thesis was Implementation and evaluation of algebraic algorithms for graph isomorphism.

• Proof-Carrying Data from Accumulation Schemes
  Benedikt Bünz, Alessandro Chiesa, Pratyush Mishra and Nicholas Spooner.
  TCC 2020, online.
• Fractal: Post-Quantum and Transparent Recursive Proofs from Holography
  Alessandro Chiesa, Dev Ojha and Nicholas Spooner.
  Eurocrypt 2020, online. [talk by Dev Ojha] SBC 2020, Stanford, USA. [talk]
• Efficient Post-quantum SNARKs for RSIS and RLWE and Their Applications to Privacy.
  Cecilia Boschini, Jan Camenisch, Max Ovsiankin and Nick Spooner.
  PQCrypto 2020.
• Succinct Arguments in the Quantum Random Oracle Model
  Alessandro Chiesa, Peter Manohar and Nicholas Spooner.
  TCC 2019, Nuremberg, Germany. QIP 2020, Shenzhen, China. [talk]
• Linear-Size Constant-Query IOPs for Delegating Computation
  Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Lior Goldberg, Tom Gur, Michael Riabzev and Nicholas Spooner.
  TCC 2019, Nuremberg, Germany.
• Aurora: Transparent Succinct Arguments for R1CS
  Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Michael Riabzev, Nicholas Spooner, Madars Virza and Nicholas P. Ward.
  Eurocrypt 2019, Darmstadt, Germany. 2nd ZKProof Standards Workshop, Berkeley, CA. [talk]
• Spatial Isolation Implies Zero Knowledge Even in a Quantum World
  Alessandro Chiesa, Michael A. Forbes, Tom Gur and Nicholas Spooner.
  FOCS 2018, Paris, France. [talk] QIP 2019, Boulder, CO, USA.
  (includes material from preprint A Zero Knowledge Sumcheck and its Applications.)
• Zero Knowledge Protocols from Succinct Constraint Detection
  Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Michael A. Forbes, Ariel Gabizon, Michael Riabzev and Nicholas Spooner.
  TCC 2017, Baltimore MD, USA.
• Interactive Oracle Proofs with Constant Query Complexity and Rate
  Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Ariel Gabizon, Michael Riabzev and Nicholas Spooner.
  ICALP 2017, Warsaw, Poland.
• Interactive oracle proofs
  Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa and Nicholas Spooner.
  TCC 2016-B, Beijing, China.
• Fixed-Budget Performance of the (1+1)-EA on Linear Functions
  Johannes Lengler and Nicholas Spooner.
  ACM/SIGEVO Foundations of Genetic Algorithms XIII (FOGA 2015), Aberystwyth, UK.

• A Zero Knowledge Sumcheck and its Applications
  Alessandro Chiesa, Michael A. Forbes and Nicholas Spooner.
  ePrint 2017/305
• Evaluation and Benchmarking for Robot Motion Planning Problems Using TuLiP
  Nicholas Spooner.
  Caltech Technical Report (2012).

• Program committee member, Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) 2020.
• Program committee member, Stanford Blockchain Conference (SBC) 2020.

Contact: last name [at] eecs [dot] berkeley [dot] edu ; Soda 615